Game & Wario' mini-games are hit and miss

Because of cheap smartphone and tablet games, it’s hard to pull off a mini-game collection that’s worth near-typical console prices.

Nintendo’s latest Wii U game, “Game & Wario,” attempts to do that. It features 12 single player games (a couple of which can be played with two players) and four multiplayer games that in the end will leave you wanting a lot more for the $39.99 price tag attached to it.

Just like “Nintendo Land,” these mini-games are designed to show off the GamePad’s capabilities. One of the first games you’ll play is called Arrow, where you use the touchscreen to shoot arrows at little robots trying to steal your strawberries. These delicious fruit stealers can be tapped away on the GamePad, too, if they get real close. It’s fun initially, but it’s not something you’ll keep going back to.

Unfortunately, that can be said about some of these games. They lose their charm too quickly. Taxi has you driving around picking up passengers and fighting off UFOs trying to snatch them away. It’s crazy fun, but there are too few levels. This definitely would have benefitted having multiplayer aspects, too. Design has you drawing lines and shapes at a certain length to create the perfect robot. It’s fun until you get a gold ranking, then becomes tedious since getting a perfect or near-perfect score is impossible.

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Games like Ski and Kung Fu require tilting the GamePad to control a character’s movement, but they don’t feel original. Pirates has you blocking arrows with the controller to a rhythmic beat, but then it ends in some weird dancing-type part that’s just plain confusing.

There are some gems, though. Gamer is cool one where you control 9-Volt who doesn’t want his mother catching him playing video games at bedtime. On the GamePad, you’ll play “WarioWare” style micro-games while keeping an eye on the TV screen for the evil, supernatural mom who randomly pops in to check on 9-Volt. Hiding too much will cause him to fall asleep. Gamer is one of the best games in this package.

Shutter has you take the role of Mona, whose job is to take photos of specific individuals for the newspaper. Pictures are taken with the GamePad, which lets you zoom in and out to capture the perfect shot. The subjects change each time to keep things fresh.

My favorite is Patchwork, a relaxing puzzle game where you fit various pieces of patchwork onto a grid. The solution is anything from a horse to a flower, and there are a ton of puzzles to solve. It’s hard to stop playing, and the soothing music fits in perfectly.

The multiplayer portion of “Game & Wario” lacks sufficient content. Disco has two players take turns creating rhythmic button presses to a musical beat on the GamePad, which the other has to correctly tap them on his/her side of the screen. It gets stale too quickly. Sketch is basically Pictionary, where players have to guess what you’re drawing.

Up to five players can play Fruit and Islands, the two others that stood out to me. In Fruit, one player uses the GamePad to control a thief who steals fruit among a crowd of characters on the TV screen. The other players have to guess who the thief is at the end of the game. In Islands, players take turns launching Fronks from the GamePad onto various targets on the TV, trying to get the most points. Players can deduct points from others by knocking their Fronks in the water. These two games are a riot with friends.

Another mode of play called Miiverse Sketch is surprisingly more appealing than some of the mini-games. Here you can share your drawings of all kinds of words online, and view sketches others have made. It’s actually kind of funny to see the artistic skills of others.

As mini-games are played, tokens are earned to use in the Cluck-A-Pop machine to pop out capsules filled with hint cards, toys and all kinds of weirdness. More stuff can be played here, some interesting, some not so much.

“Game & Wario” is not like the popular “WarioWare” games of past. The familiar characters are there and the presentation is top notch, but there are too few gems in a game that recycles many ideas we’ve already seen before.

2 stars out of 4

A copy of “Game & Wario” was supplied by Nintendo for this review.

Jeff Hoard, of the Oakland Press, writes about video games for Digital First Media. He can be reached at jeff.hoard@oakpress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffHoard921. His blog is www.yay4videogames.blogspot.com.